Former Crucible world champion Dennis Taylor wants talks with Barry Hearn over creating incredible new snooker venue
DENNIS TAYLOR wants snooker bosses to establish a Hall of Fame where he can exhibit his 1985 Black Ball final cue and unorthodox glasses.
Monday is the 40th anniversary of the moment when Taylor came from 8-0 and 9-1 down to beat the reigning champion Steve Davis 18-17, the result being settled on the last black.
The thrilling finale was watched by more than 18 million people and is still remembered and talked about four decades on.
Taylor – who can still out-party men half his age – has got the world championship-winning cue at home, even though his late Westie dog did chew the end off.
And he is keen for his famous upside-down specs to go somewhere special that they can be shown off for future generations.
The Northern Ireland potter, 76, said: “Somebody once wanted to buy the glasses and cue off me. But that’s something I would never sell.
“It’s something to hand out to the family. I don’t know why our association don’t make some sort of museum where we can leave memorabilia.
“If there was a Hall of Fame, I would possibly leave the cue and glasses.
“I might even suggest that. It’s an idea because people have trophies that they would put in a Hall of Fame.
“We will have to see if Mr Barry Hearn might be interested.”
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Taylor and Davis, 67, have been commemorating the much-loved contest with a series of Road Show events across the UK, including one at the Crucible earlier this month.
The idea is that at the end of every night, Taylor has the chance to sink the final black, and the crowds keep on coming.
Asked why he thinks people still talk about that special moment,
Taylor said: “I think it’s the fact that nobody was beating Steve in the 80s, he was dominating the game.
“He never gave me a chance in the first session. He totally outplayed me. I was sitting in my seat all afternoon.
“The fact I had gone so far behind and then I won the last six frames in the evening with most of the frames won with one-visit. It captured the imagination.
“All of a sudden people were tuning in. They were cancelling programmes to stay with the final.
“How nearly 19 million people nearly stayed up after midnight, I’ll never know.
“And it was probably more because the number of people that tell me, ‘Oh we were in a club, and they kept the club open, there were probably 40 of us around the TV sets’.
“Who knows how many people actually watched that final.”
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